i never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
by alvbco
Summary: If Clarke Griffin & Lexa Bryant didn't exist where it was all as simple as land/sky, day/night, up/down, live/die. If Clarke Griffin & Lexa Bryant didn't quite find their place in the world until the world found a place for them, if Clarke Griffin and Lexa Bryant were... quite simply, a little fucked. (Now with a side of Raven snark for just 4.99)
1. prologue: run run run run run

Nothing happens in October. It's a quiet month.

In fact, if a year were to be compared to the unfolding of a day, I'll bet October would be the sleepy twilight time, when nature is preparing to succumb to unconsciousness and everything gleams in the soft setting sun. In October, the cherry trees flare up with so much gold that their tired branches simply can't hold it all up. One by one, the little nugget leaves slowly slip off, then soon enough, there's nothing left. The light fades, the year tucks itself into bed, the bare branches look like bones under the moonlight, bones that have been made into some twisted sort of mobile to hang above the year's bed, bones that are menacing, but not menacing enough to tug the year out of its dreams.

One evening in the middle of this, a flower vendor sat on a crate by the street, contemplating this very process as he dragged a toe back and forth in the leaf rubble. He saw it every year, watched the world fall asleep from inside his tiny kingdom, which was inhabited by only him and his cart blooming with freesias, anemones, and daffodils. For him, it was a peaceful process. Quiet, soft, easy. All he heard of it all passing by was the tinny echo of his favorite Velvet Underground track filtering through old headphones ( _Teenage Mary said to Uncle Dave, I sold my soul, must be saved_ _)_ and just beyond that, a soft rain that was slowing business enough that just maybe, he'd be able to go home in time for the 8 o'clock news.

Little did he know, there was one thing that would break the mold of the season that evening. Or, rather, one _person_ who would come along and shatter the mold entirely, until there was nothing left.

I wish, looking back, that I could warn that poor man about Clarke Griffin. I don't know what I'd say exactly, or what I _could_ say. How do you prepare someone for that kind of person? It's not like she meant any harm. She was just a girl who was bearing too much. A girl whose burden was so big that she couldn't fit it in her hands, not even on her shoulders, not even if she wrapped around and around and around her torso and gave up her whole body to trying to hold it off the ground. I don't know how you can adequately prepare for that kind of person, really. Clarke meant nothing against the natural progression of the seasons but just so happened to have an agenda. Once that caught on, everything else just kind of went up in flames, including the freesias, the anemones, and the daffodils.

Maybe it was best that I couldn't have prepared him. Perhaps it's a good thing that he had those last few minutes with his flowers, and his Velvet Underground CD.

 _Gonna take a walk down to Union Square_

 _You never know who you're gonna find there._

 _You gotta run, run, run, run_

 _Take a drag or two_

 _Run, run, run, run, run._

I guess I'll never know. Maybe you'll be able to provide an answer.

(If you don't, or can't, I understand.)

[Note: The musical aesthetic for this prologue is brought to us by the kind folks at Velvet Underground, which you can check out at watch?v=CGqwy_DQnS4 if you like a lil' of the old school tunes to go with your gay fanfiction. Thanks for reading!]


	2. chapter i: turning into stone

p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"1./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Got a warrant for ya, Chief."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""This time of year? What are we dealing with - petty theft, public urination?"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""A little more exciting than that."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""But I had tickets for the game tonight. We better make this quick."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"2./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"When we meet Clarke Griffin, she's - to put it delicately - fucking up. On a colossal scale, at that. She fell into her demise that evening the same way one would trip over say, a lip in a sidewalk that they weren't ready for, or that last step that they really could've sworn they'd already passed. It was every bit as undignified, unplanned, and messy, I assure you. And my, Clarke Griffin definitely went down swearing./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"At this early stage in the night, she was just a girl, still. She was colliding through a storm cloud at full throttle and her lungs were full of (and bursting with) self-wrought pandemonium. Her mind, on the other hand, contained something quite different. If you'd asked her what that was, she probably wouldn't have been able to meet your eyes. But I know that it was ladybugs, and burning flowers./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The ladybugs? Because her brain had chosen then of all moments to do a mental re-run of a documentary she'd seen on the Discovery Channel during the spring all the way from '01 to '04. Although it'd been years since she'd seen it, she found herself mouthing the narration as she ran, remembering each bit with perfect clarity. Although it'd been years, when she closed her eyes she could've sworn she could still hear the exact tempo of the old living room fan's clicking and feel the big, warm arms around her that had always been her fortress./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Ladybugs have several impressive defence mechanisms. When targeted, they release a toxic fluid from their knees to deter predators."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Clarke had always been one for the insect shows because those were the ones where he'd opt for the double buns as he sat with her in his lap, mussing her platinum curls. She liked the double buns over the french braids because he said the double buns made her look like Princess Leia. To that, she'd always demand to be addressed as Queen Leia and he'd meet her crossed arms with a "What about….Emperor Leia?"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"At this, she'd grin and jump onto the coffee table. "What about Emperor Clarke?"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"It was always this way. He'd been calling her Emperor Clarke for at least two summers' worth of the Discovery Channel but every time she came up with it, he went along as if the idea were ground-breaking. Even though they'd drafted the official constitution of Planet Poptarts 39 times by that point, he figured, "Hey, at least the kid'll be good at poli-sci," and never wasted a minute in whipping out his pen and Clarke's drawing book./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Because of this routine, they never actually watched the second half of the documentary, but Clarke knew the next part ("This fluid leaves yellow stains on all it touches, repulsing those planning to attack the beetle.") all the same because they left it running in the background every time./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"3./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Running across the pavement 13 years later, Clarke took a deep breath to expel all the ladybug trivia from inside her and remind herself where she was. She looked around, trying to tug her brain back to reality, although it was hard to take what she saw as that. The sky was alight in a fantastic kind of way, set on fire with cracks and bangs from behind her, what could've easily been mistaken for a show of fireworks had she not been in the know. Everywhere she looked, chaos leaked out of the surfaces in such a tangible terrifying manner that Clarke imagined she'd go home and trek chaos onto the carpet. She imagined herself scrubbing her face of it and putting her clothes in the wash and selecting the "Daily Wash" cycle to get rid of just all the chaos on them. It was everywhere around her, leaking out of buildings and streaming from streetlights, even exuding out of the very air particles themselves. She had the funny feeling that her entire life had been flipped upside down. Not only that, but oblique and every which way./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Clarke turned the corner and found herself sprinting along 1st Street. The fire outside of her was ebbing away at the one inside of her and her lungs were starting to burn and her feet were starting to protest, but she kept going by way of a buzzing heartbeat. She had the electricity of the lightning stirring inside her veins, coming out of its slumber to collect in her chest and sink into place with a faint click that sounded at the same time she heard the first siren in the distance./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"4./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her feet came to a dead halt, although her mind continued on in somersaults, each at the speed of roughly 100 miles an hour. She looked around her, taking in the aftermath of what she'd created./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""If food is scarce, ladybugs take measures uncommon for animals of the family."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"As she squinted through the rain, two figures came crashing into definition amongst the smoke and downpour. Jasper and Harper were sprinting ahead of her, Jasper swinging his goggles like a battle flag and Harper providing the victory song to his march, giggling and whooping as she ran, arms out by her side. The songs they made pelted off buildings, mingling with the raindrops to echo in the gap between them and swing back and hit Clarke square in the middle of the chest, right where all the electricity was humming. At that moment, a realisation occurred:/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"They were just kids./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"They were just kids running through the rain. They were just kids who thought they were on a victory march when in reality, each step was one closer to a sentence./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"And Clarke had led them to this./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"And they were just kids./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The lump in her throat swelled, impossible to swallow down. Her hands fell limply to her sides. She vaguely registered the sound of her lighter splashing into a puddle./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"They were just kids./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""When faced with limited resources, the species has been known to practice cannibalism. A hungry ladybug will go so far as to make meals of any soft-bodied it encounters, even a sibling or child."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"A tear slid down Clarke's face. It was lost among the raindrops on her skin, a kaleidoscope of blue and red dots in the flickering of the nearing sirens. She remained locked in place as her friends disappeared in a flurry of boot prints and mud droplets. They squealed off in their car and she waited behind, letting the buzz collect just underneath her skin, repeating bits of trivia about a ladybug's lifespan and its reproductive habits over and over in fragments through chattering teeth./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"A hooded figure, the last of them, looked back at her as he unlocked his truck. He was hunched in the rain, holding the door open for her./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Clarke, come on! They'll catch up any minute. Get the fuck in the car!"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"By then it was too late, and Clarke could hear the police pulling to a stop a couple blocks back. If Bellamy wasted any more time, they'd all be lost in the cracks./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""It can even mean eating its own larvae for protein. Ladybugs will do what they need to to survive."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""I'm not coming, you have to go. Now."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Clarke, no! Get in the car and come home. You don't have to do this."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She looked at him and the current inside of her leaked into her gaze. She was ages older, bearing more weight than any 19-year-old shoulders should./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""You know that they had no part in this, really. This is mine. This is my shit, I'm going down with it, Bell." She looked at him and said the words that were bleeding from her fingertips and painted in tiny letters across the angry patch of skin on her face. "I bear it so they don't have to."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He bowed his head, shaking it slightly. Clarke knew he understood and she knew he'd be hating himself for it, but she also knew that nothing he said could've changed her mind. It was common knowledge that when Clarke Griffin made a choice, she wouldn't be swayed. And more importantly, if she made a choice, it was generally for good reason. She never thought of herself and until then, it'd been something he teased her for. But in moments like this, her inability to let go was what held them all together./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Shooting a look at the figures advancing behind her, he jogged back to her and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. As he pulled back, his hands gently curled her fingers around the tank he'd been carrying. Her gaze bore into his and she wiped the tears in her eyes and said,/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""It's okay."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"and/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Thank you for everything."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"and/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""I love you,/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Bell."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He smiled with broken eyes and whispered "Whatever the hell we want, huh?" and she nodded slowly and then he was gone./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"If Clarke Griffin made a choice, she wouldn't be swayed./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""I bear it so they don't have to," she told herself, watching him shoot one last look back at her before speeding away./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Then she was alone, left in the rain murmuring words that sounded empty to her mind, which was back on that April afternoon in 2004. The day when her mom came home to find her fast asleep in her dad's lap on a blanket fort throne. The day they'd gotten developed on film and framed, stored next to the keyboard in her dad's old office. He'd been adamant that he was going to bring it out at her 21st and she'd always swatted him away when he claimed that, but always with a smile tugging at her lips./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""I bear it so they don't have to,/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"I bear it so they don't have to./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Ibearitsotheydon'thaveto,/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Ibearitsotheydon'thaveto/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"I-"/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"5./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""You have the right to remain silent." A police officer clasped two handcuffs around Clarke's wrists. The veins that touched the metal flashed, buzzing under her skin./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Whatever it takes for the continuation of their species."/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"That was when Clarke Griffin simultaneously threw her burdens into the night and took on an entire weight anew. It was the night she ignited, and it was also the night her life curled up in flames./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"But if Clarke Griffin made a choice, it was for good reason…/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Right?/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"[Note: span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15.12px; line-height: 22.68px;"The musical aesthetic of this chapter is watch?v=YQO-k8wHrHg my tumblr is clarkegriffinslastfuck if you have any questions about the fic! Feedback is always super appreciated. Thanks for reading, lovelies!]/span/p 


	3. ii: a prison and you're in it alone

"And then they arrested me. And that's it, that's how I got into this mess." Clarke finished her story, taking a deep breath.

"Look, this is awkward but I was actually asking "What's on your shoe?" not… Not, "What did you do?" I've read your case notes, so uh, I already _know_ what you did…"

Clarke pursed her lips. "Oh. _That._ " She plastered on a tone of faux positivity and tried to not feel like an idiot for having spent the last fifteen minutes divulging the fucked up mess of her life to this random ass police officer.

"Yeah, it uh- looks real nasty." He narrowed his eyes, tilting his head as he considered it. "Do you think you stepped in dog shit or something? That looks exactly what my poodle puts out after French Fry Fridays."

She looked down at the ridiculous white heels they'd stuffed her into and sure enough, there it was. Like dog shit. Maybe even a sick dog's shit, if you wanna go there. Clarke rolled her eyes.

"That's fucked." He wrinkled his nose. "Do you want, like, a tissue for that? I might have a Wet Wipe, even." Clarke made to take it and then realised that her hands were cuffed still and thought she'd preserve the tiny smidgeon of dignity that remained by just shaking her head with an aggressively cheery smile.

"I hope you work out those daddy issues though, by the way. Sounds tough." He added as afterthought. Clarke nodded.

"Thanks, yeah. I'll uh… Certainly think on it."

"We're at the court building, now, though. If you wanna-" the man gestured with his head toward the door, which another officer had just pulled open.

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, yeah." She mumbled, ignoring his outstretched hand. Handcuffs or not, she could get out of a vehicle just fine on her own. Okay sure, maybe "just fine" equated to awkwardly stumbling out and bumping her heel on the floormat, but all of the officers acted like they didn't see it and Clarke was heavily inclined to ungracefully breeze past that moment.

When we next encounter Clarke Griffin, she's not fucking up anymore, but is certainly not doing a great job of dealing with her aforementioned fuckups.

Let me say that again: she's in court.

Like, _the_ court. For criminals and axe murderers and fraud peddlers and gang members and shit.

And now, apparently, her.

She didn't register a lot of how it all unfolded. It just seemed to kind of… happen. It was like this:

There was a courtroom. There were people looking at her.

Some people who looked more like animals than people. They were the ones who sat poised with recorders in their laps and pens in their hands that Clarke thought would've been better as knives because they had this hungry look in their eyes and were perpetually perched on the edges of their seats and Clarke felt like, just maybe, they'd devour her whole.

Others, not so much - but they weren't much better.

They looked like just maybe they were trying to care which, don't even get me started. Clarke had had enough of... _that_. They wouldn't stop staring at her face and searching her eyes and she knew they were the ones whose job it was to glean as much humanity as they could from within her features. She also knew that it was only a matter of time before recognition dawned - and she was right. One by one, their lips moved to say, "Oh my, it's been so long," and "What happened to her?" and at that point, she stopped paying attention to them; noting only that she wanted to make it as hard as possible for them to get what they wanted.

The trial went exactly as she'd expected. They put her up on the stand and gave her a Bible and said, "Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" and she nodded and wondered whether they really wanted that much. They asked for her alibi and she shrugged. Then they asked her accomplices and she shrugged.

They asked lots of questions. She did a lot of shrugging.

Somewhere along the way, she stopped paying attention and started to think about what she'd do if she had oil paint at that moment. A portrait sounded nice, but she didn't have it in her to give that much of herself to anything at that point. Portraits were such personal affairs and Clarke kind of needed to protect her own for a little bit.

Maybe a landscape. She felt so confined in the dress they'd stuffed to her into, so she dreamed she had green and brown paint all over her hands and was crafting a forest. She'd always had a thing for pine trees. She liked how they smelt in a fire.

Maybe she could paint a fire.

But-

Flames were starting to get awfully personal, too.

Before long, the court adjourned for a short break and Clarke was escorted into the waiting room. She sat down in a chair and even though her lips had slowed, the words swirled about in her brain, whisps and whisps of "I bear it so they don't have to." Each one followed the next in rapid succession, collecting in the edges and rough curves inside her skull.

Clarke pressed her lips together.

"What are you doing, Clarke?" The doors stormed open and there was suddenly a very small, very angry figure bearing down on her. "The jury knows you can't have done this alone. You're making this worse for yourself, just tell them who was with you! Can't you cooperate at all?"

She looked up from the floor slowly. Clarke recognised the voice before she saw the face, which for the most part had gone unchanged. Clarke did notice that her eyes had dulled to a constant steely grey but other than that, it was uncanny.

But that voice?

Oh yeah. Exactly the fucking same. She'd never forget the ins and outs of that voice. The way her name sounded in it, like an admonition rather than a real word, and how even an expression of affection could come out like a business agreement.

"Hello to you too," Clarke chirped, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head forward to address her. An awkward silence followed as the woman looked her over and Clarke moved to cross her arms out of those good ol' defence habits. The cuffs got in the way but she managed something. "Nice to see you again."

She stared at her. "Really, Clarke?"

"Well, not _really_ ," she smiled sardonically. "But you always raised me to be polite, so."

Her mom pursed her lips, her hands a continuous motion of flexing and unflexing at her sides and her back stiff enough to remind Clarke of the kind of reception she used to get when she was twelve and had forgotten to feed her cat. "This isn't the time for attitude. I'm doing everything I can to protect you here, I'm… putting it all on the line and you just-?" She took a breath. "I only have so much power, Clarke."

Clarke sighed. "Look," she began slowly, cracking her knuckles out at a leisurely pace to avoid eye contact. "I'm sorry for…. what this will do to your reputation." Crack. "But-" Crack. "I made my choices, just like-" Crack. "You made yours." She looked up to meet Abby's eyes, not letting her mother escape the blame in her look. "This is my life. You may be, well. You. But this is the one thing I'm actually in charge of. And me, the person in charge? I didn't ask you to show up here today. I don't need your power."

Abby turned out and used the table next to the wall to steady herself as she took a moment to collect her cool. Taut fingers scratched against a loose splinter and a pressed blazer brushed against an old coffee cup ring. Little pieces of professionality scattered with each uneven inhale until all she had left was her last nerve. She turned back to face Clarke and Clarke refused to wince under the scrape of her heel spinning on the tile floor.

"Do you know what the penalty is for what you've attempted, are you - were you aware of that? This is classified as low-level terrorism. Do you not get that?"

Clarke didn't say anything for a while. She looked down at her wrist and ran her finger along the edge of the handcuff that sat there, covering up the residence of a small tattoo that said, "I am become death."

"I'm doing everything I can but I need you to work with me here," her mom continued. "And I might be able to actually help you, but you need to just tell me who was with you that night."

Clarke was silent. Her eyes bore a hole into her mother's. If her mom was a steely grey, Clarke was a blue ice, and ice has more bite than steel, anyway, doesn't it?

No words were exchanged.

Eventually, it was time to go back in.

Clarke didn't see any more of her mother until the verdict was handed down and she followed the sound of a gasp to see her the words barrelling through the air to hit Abby square in the chest. The image of her mother collapsing was burned into the inside of her eyes when she was escorted out.

Talk about a fuckup.

 **Note:** Hope you liked the update! This chapter's musical aesthetic is Ball Park Music's 'Stuggle Street' ( watch?v=3Vn4SrFeUv0). Feedback is always super appreciated because I'm a huge attention junkie but no pressure, you do you!


	4. iii: & i'm so damn caught in the middle

Before long, there Clarke Griffin was.

Her body was still being pushed at from every which angle, but this time it wasn't from that ridiculous gaudy white pantsuit. Rather, it was an empty hallway that signified her fuckup on a colossal level. The guard traipsing in front of her had kind eyes that kept looking back to make sure she was following okay & they seemed to apologise a little bit with every blink.

He tried at conversation: "You're lucky your mom pulled her strings, the judge wanted to give you life."

And she tried at it right back. "She's truly a gift as a mother."

He chuckled, enjoying the break from silence. "I know what you mean - my dad wasn't exactly keen on the idea of me working around axe murderers and shit," He side eyed her, wincing. "Sorry." She shrugged. "No offence. But I mean, parents right?"

Clarke tried to smile because, really, he might have been the most kind-natured person she'd encountered, and she could tell he meant no harm.

But it's when they mean no harm that their words do the worst. She tried to smile and be subtle about the fact that she wrapped her arms around herself, just for a minute. It had been a long time and she was nearly able to power through these moments without having to do that but it was those innocent, passing, fleeting comments that got her; when she wasn't expecting it at all so the thought hit her square in the space between her eyes and she felt like her skin was bunching and unbunching in place and her ribs had shrunk two sizes.

The arms helped, really.

They were a good way of reminding herself that her face hadn't really been hit by anything and that her skin was still where it should be and that her ribs were their normal circumference. Sometimes she needed that.

They stopped in front of 319 and Monty gave her a friendly smile. He was gracious enough not to comment on the arms, or the tear-rimmed eyes and she thought, "Thank god for boys with hearts that warm."

"You'll be okay here, inmate."

He handed her a pile of clothes and a regulation toothbrush and left and Clarke counted back from ten and then she compartmentalised the bad things into her bad things box and put on her uniform.

She caught her reflection in the window, ran her fingers across her cheek. Through the bars, she saw that the burns still hadn't completely healed and had turned an angry red colour. She tried to smile and looked slightly unhinged when she did but she figured it was just as well. Kind of fitting, actually.

"Want me to polish it for you so you can see yourself better? Maybe get some a pedestal for you too, princess?" A woman piped up from the bed next to hers.

Clarke rolled her eyes and turned to her, feigning a smile. "Actually, a pedestal would be great thank you," she said sweetly. "So you can shove it up your ass. That is, if there's enough room next to your head."

She got into bed.

Freakin' prison.

 **Note:** Hola! This chapter's song is 'Strong' by London Grammar ( watch?v=6drfp_3823I). My Tumblr account is . if you have any questions about the fic! Thanks for checking it out. I hope your day is as wonderful as the empowering, emotionally-supportive dynamic between Clarke & Lexa pre 3x07.


	5. iv:when the world don't orbit around you

p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"12 hours later, Clarke was among a string of fellow fuckups being ushered down a hall by a guard who looked less thrilled than she was to be there, which was impressive because she perfected the defiant teenager act in the womb. /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"He stopped in front of a doorway and looked down at the clipboard dangling lazily between his fingers./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Alright, uh… Monroe, Harper, you're through here to the library." He waited for two small brunettes to shuffle through the door and continued towards another room./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""This is maintenance. Inmates in this work detail are Griffin and... That's it, Griffin." He nodded towards the door and kept walking without checking to see if she'd moved./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Clarke pursed her lips as she did a mental debrief of her past adventures fixing things as a kid. Surely it wouldn't be that bad anymore./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Just ask for Reyes, she'll show you around." Murphy turned back to add, snapping his gum. Clarke nodded in his direction, more for her own benefit than anything else./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;" /p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"-/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;" /p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""We got us a new sparky!" /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Apparently "Reyes" was an inmate with glitter paint all over her jumpsuit and a tattoo sleeve consisting entirely of Bart Simpson's ass ("Drunken choice, not my proudest moment, still can't deny it's damn good artistry. And you know what? Totally blacked out so I have no idea who did it. I've been trying to find this tattoo artist for, like, two years now. I want to get a blueprint of Apollo 11 done but no other studio compares to this immaculate shading."). She lifted her hand up from her crutch handle for a high five and then took off on the aforementioned "showing around". /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""So, uh, why are you here?" Clarke wasn't sure how one was to make friends in prison but she figured that was good start (I'd like to take this moment to remind you that this is a story about her fuckups, so it's to be expected that she'd say shit like this)./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Oh my god, Clarke. You can't just ask people that!" /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Really? Fuck. Sorry." /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Raven rolled her eyes. "Kidding, rookie. What do you think this is, Orange is the New Black? The drama here's nowhere near that entertaining. And I have to totally carry the comedic relief on my own." /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Clarke nodded slowly. "So what's your conviction then?"/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Blew up a bridge to prove a point, no biggie."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Clarke grinned. "What was the point?"/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""My ex-boyfriend, the 'architecture major' -" She rolled her eyes. "Remind me to never date a douche who studies buildings all day again - said it was indestructible. Apparently the only thing that was indestructible in that situation was the iron clad first of the law. Oh well, live and learn or whatever. I was right, that's all that counts."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"They passed through a doorway Clarke hadn't seen yet. "Yeah, so after all my hard work building a bomb out of recycled materials I get slapped with the ol' "anarchist" label. So I told them to anar-kiss my ass and got 8 years. Also, the bomb was a little too good and now I've got these bad boys for another few months." She lifted a crutch to signify her point. "Anyway, enough about me. This is the toolroom. Nobody ever hangs out in here and you're only allowed in if you have a guard with you, which is a rule some of the ladies take way too seriously. See that stuff in the corner? Not white paint. They'd never let us use stuff that white. Our white paint is like- piss grey by the time they're done thinning it." /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Clarke looked around and went to pick up a hammer before pausing at the withering look Raven was giving her. "No?"/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Clarke, you seem nice but if you so much as touch Percy I will fuck you up. I've had these crutches for a while now, I'm pretty hard to outrun." /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Clarke put her hand back by her side. "Don't touch the green hammer, noted." /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Raven turned and began on her way out of the room and Clarke followed, careful not to touch anything else. /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""This is the main room - we don't spend a lot of time in here unless we're fixing stuff that's been brought in. Our specialty is toasters but we also do the occasional emotional wreck nice and good, too. See Ira in the corner?" Clarke turned to where a middle-aged woman looked up from a magazine and waved. "She cut off her husband's testicles but is surprisingly sensitive. She was the only one who could talk me down after last week's episode of Grey's Anatomy. I mean, I want Callie to be happy but she and Arizona were my jam and I just, I don't know what to do with myself anymore." /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""You get TV in here?"/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Only once a week. But I get a lil' extra on Thursday nights for what me and the guards call 'good behaviour'." She leaned in close to Clarke and elbowed her, whispering, "If ya know what I mean."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Clarke raised her eyebrows. "Wow."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Yeah, isn't it weird that a guard would need to be talked through the process of changing car oil? Government employees are useless, dude." /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Clarke opened her mouth to respond when a bell sounded./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Damn, lunch already?" Raven pouted. "I didn't even get to the best part yet."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Best part?"/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""We have machine manuals with actual diagrams. In a place like this, it's as close as you're gonna get to a porno, I'm tellin ya."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""She's right, honey." Ira added./span/p  
p class="p2" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;" /p  
p class="p2" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"-/p  
p class="p2" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;" /p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Okay, inmates. Time for lunch." /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Anya grinned, not wasting a second before pushing off the ground beside the pot they were attending to and throwing her gloves past Lexa's nose, each flying within an inch of her face but never quite touching her skin as they landed in a heap on the pile of dirt. Lexa scowled, as grateful as ever that she made friends with a fucking ex-baseballer. /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Chin up, Bryant! Don't wanna look too cheerful. People might think you actually have a soul." Anya chirped, reaching out her hand to help her up. Lexa rolled her eyes as she discarded her gloves with the tips of her fingers. /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""As a devout lesbian, I have every right to not want things flung at my face, thank you."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Anya chuckled, opened the door to the greenhouse. "Next time I'll make sure to let you gently caress my gloves for three hours and then cry afterwards instead, softie."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Lexa's mouth opened to inform her that It Was Actually Just That One Time Thank You - and also She Had Allergies - when she saw a head of dirty blonde hair, mussed in the kind of lazy waves that she hadn't seen in… She didn't want to think of how long. Or the context under which she last saw them. She froze in her tracks, her fingers closing around Anya's wrist, her lips moving to whisper, "It couldn't be." There was a name on the tip of her tongue and unravelling in the bottom of her stomach and etching itself into the walls of her left ventricle and she swallowed the name and did her coping mechanism because, after the initial shock, she realised that of course there was no way emthat/em would be possible./span/p  
p class="p2" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;" /p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"The wall of her heart shuddered a bit under the weight of the name and she did her coping mechanisms again, steeling herself to walk through the cafeteria and past the head of hair. Her eyes were frozen forward, trained dead in front of her. She was determined not to look at the girl's face but heard, "Clarke, are you hitting on me? I know I'm irresistible, but-" and let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding because yes, of course, she knew it couldn't have been emher/em. She lined up behind Anya and trained her eyes on the ceiling, which was swimming in and out of focus as the familiar, uncomfortable sensation of tears prickling the edges of her eyes became prominent. She was so focused on biting her lip and counting to three that she didn't even register Anya passing her a tray, only able to take in the resounding thud of her own heart echoing in a wave of pain from the centre of her body to her fingertips. As she stood there and had food dolloped onto her plate, Lexa's heart went thud, thud, thud, her hands ached, and she decided to allow her /spanspan class="s1"herself one look at the girl in hope it'd do away with it. When she looked up, Raven was still talking but there were two lightning bolts sitting beside her, burning into Lexa's eyes. /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Clarke was staring at her. /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Lexa ignored the fact that looking did the opposite of helping and put her tray down in the middle of the line./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"She left before it could get worse. /span/p  
p class="p2" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;" /p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"-/span/p  
p class="p2" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;" /p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Who the fuck is that?" Clarke asked, looking after the corner Lexa had disappeared behind. There was something… off about her. About the way she carried herself, the way she was flanked by two women, and the fact that she barely acknowledged them, only giving a slight inclination of the head as they handed her a plate and went about getting her lunch served for her. There was a menacing creature lurking inside those eyes, and something unhinging about the way they were so perfectly concealed behind the frames of the prescription lenses she wore. /spanspan class="s1""The cafeteria just parted like the freakin' red sea for her." /span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Raven didn't even follow Clarke's gaze before nodding. "Oh, that's Lexa. I heard she got done for serial killing but nobody's sure. Not a big talker." She took a sip of her water and shrugged. "You'll see her around. She's with us in electrical every second day, really good with the intricate electrical work. Something about those long fingers. It's not just the sockets she turns on if you catch my drift."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Clarke choked on her water and Raven had to thump her on the back a few times before she could speak again. "But seriously, what the fuck is her deal? She looks like she just walked out of some fucked up vampire senate on a particularly off day for the O-Negative economy."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"Raven chuckled. "What we know is literally just rumours, but I heard she's really high up in the T Gang. It's short for, like, Tridgedakru? Or something? I don't know. But apparently she's the Big Boss. I don't know what it's called out there - like the prefect gangster? The head bitch in charge? Who knows. But apparently that status carries over to jail in her mind."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Wow." Clarke raised her eyebrows, deep in thought./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""'Wow' is accurate. But at least she's hot."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""I mean obviously, but... wow."/span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1""Fucked up." They both said in unison. Raven grinned and Clarke nodded at her - instant friendship./span/p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;" /p  
p class="p1" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;" /p  
p class="p1"strong style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"span class="s1"A/N: /span/strongspan style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;"span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 15.8004px;"strongAs always, thank you so much for reading! The musical aesthetic for this installation is watch?v=EFEmTsfFL5A. I hope you all have a lovely day!/strong/span/span/p 


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